We are reading from the Bhagavad Gita.
Bhagavad Gita is a story of our spiritual journey.
Our spiritual journey from kind of being attached to everything we're raised to be attached to.
You know,
When we're brought up by our parents or whoever brought us up.
We naturally assume their ideals.
We naturally are happy by the things that make them happy and saddened or angry by the things that make them angry or sad.
We are taught what they believe to be right or wrong.
We're taught what it means to be a good person or a bad person and,
You know,
Whatever.
Know,
That's sort of how we're raised to figure out how to exist here on planet Earth as a human.
And so we can spend a lot of our time.
In that world believing that oh i have to make money i mean obviously we have to have money to pay rent and eat but that i need to make a lot of money or i need to be successful in this way or i need to look a certain way or i need to have this kind of relationship or i need to get this kind of education or else I'm not worthy or my life is wasted or whatever.
And we can spend a lot of time.
Honing our body to the point of almost dysfunction you know just trying to make it look a certain way or twisting our lives in ways just to make enough money to I don't know have three cars and a big house and whatever and we can really lose ourselves in that world.
The Bhagavad Gita is a story about a discussion between Arjuna and Krishna.
Arjuna is us.
Arjuna was raised in a family just like all of us and brothers and cousins and all the things and teachers and here's what's right and here's what's wrong and And the Bhagavad Gita is set on a battlefield.
And is essentially set in a civil war.
Between.
People on the evil king's side and Arjuna's side.
And at one point,
Arjuna drives into the center of the battlefield to look around.
And he realizes that he has friends and family on all sides.
How can he possibly fight?
Now the Gita is meant to be understood as a personal spiritual journey.
But the battlefield is not a physical field depicting a war.
In Indian history.
It's called Kurukshetra,
And Kurukshetra means It's like the pilgrimage to the heart.
When we start to leave all the teachings of other people.
And begin to enter our own heart.
And the wisdom.
That is within our own heart.
Which is very different because especially like in.
Eastern thought,
The heart chakra.
This is Anahat.
This is where our divine self lives.
This is Atman.
So when we start listening to our heart,
We start connecting to our soul.
And we stop connecting to all the things out there.
That we were told were so important.
So important that you should twist your life.
In order to get them or twist your life to avoid them.
Following the heart is very different.
It's a very.
.
.
Sober path?
And I mean that in that it's not emotionally volatile.
You experience emotions because we're human.
But we're not like living in an emotional pinball machine where one minute we're happy,
The next minute we're sad,
The next minute we're angry,
And the next minute we're self-righteous,
And the next minute.
.
.
It's not like that.
There's this soberness in the heart,
Almost like.
.
.
So I went to a wedding this weekend.
One of my friends got married.
It was really cool because my friend got married and one of my other friends was the officiant.
And so it was very surreal.
And it was a backyard wedding.
And very small,
Like 25,
30 people.
And I've started to realize that in my past,
I was an introvert.
When I was young.
I was a very happy,
Quiet child who just loved to read.
You know,
I had friends,
But I wasn't the center of attention or anything.
And over time and owning businesses and becoming a teacher,
I ended up in the center of attention slot.
Which created a lot more volatility in that emotional state.
Because you're always so excited because you've got to teach,
And then you're so crashing after because you're exhausted.
And then you've got to put on a face for the dog and pony show,
And then you're going to withdraw because you don't like people anymore.
And you're kind of in this weird space.
So now,
In my 58th year on Earth,
I'm starting to reclaim that old introvert.
So when I go to a gathering like this wedding,
And it's very casual and everyone's just hanging out in the backyard.
My little introvert self is actually quite uncomfortable.
Because the extroverted self that I learned to become.
Would feel obligated to go around and talk to everybody.
And so anyway.
.
.
William and I,
We were kind of sitting there hanging out.
And it was so neat to kind of have this central perch.
I just sort of sat there and people would come over and talk to me or sometimes I would go and talk to people.
But for all intents and purposes,
I kind of just sat quietly.
And I just experienced it from this happy,
Introverted place.
In some ways,
That's like the heart chakra.
Like you sort of have this happy self that is connected to your soul.
And you're experiencing the world.
But you're quite calm inside.
Something sad might happen and you might cry.
But you're still calm inside.
Or something might happen that's really funny.
Or something that makes you angry and you can still kind of get angry or laugh.
There's a calmness inside.
So that's sort of what happens when we begin our spiritual path.
That we start to dance between this calm sense of the soul and this very human life that's been trained to be super attached to everything.
So here we have Arjuna in the middle of the battlefield.
And he has Krishna as his charioteer.
Who on one hand is a family friend,
Kind of a favorite uncle.
But also is God,
The Divine,
Lord,
Whatever language you like.
So at one point,
Arjuna just collapses in the chariot and says,
I cannot fight.
I cannot engage.
I don't want to.
And Krishna says,
You must.
And this is all of us when we come to a point in our life,
Maybe a dark night of the soul.
Everything I've ever believed has brought me to a dead end.
What do I do?
Of course,
They say that when the student is ready,
The teacher appears.
It's not like when the student is ready,
Like they're big and strong and powerful.
It's like when the student has given up.
Everything they've ever thought they knew is true.
And are ready to hear something new.
That's when the student is ready.
And that's when.
That's where Arjuna was.
Where he was like.
.
.
I give up.
Help me find a different way of understanding the world.
And that's the dialogue of the Gita.
Is Arjuna asking a question?
And then Krishna.
Explaining it.
Today we are looking at chapter two verses 56 and 57.
Up until this point,
They've talked about all kinds of things,
You know,
That we are eternal and you have to let go of attachment and all these kind of things.
And Arjuna's kind of at a point where he's like,
Alright,
I'm not going to keep arguing with you.
He's like,
So tell me what this guy's like.
It's always a guy,
But tell me what it's like to actually live in this.
Wise state.
I know what it's like for me and my other warrior friends and family,
But What's it like for this sage guy?
You know,
Give me some,
Give me some for instances.
So,
Previously.
.
.
Arjuna said.
How would you describe the man whose wisdom is steadfast,
Krishna?
How does a wise man speak?
How does he sit,
Stand,
Walk?
Krishna says,
When a man gives up all desires that emerge from the mind.
And rests contented in the self by the self.
He is called a man of firm wisdom.
So those are two we looked at last week.
Here's what we're looking at this week.
He whose mind is untroubled by any misfortune.
Whose craving for pleasures has disappeared.
Who is free from greed,
Fear,
And anger.
Who is unattached to all things.
Who neither grieves nor rejoices if good or bad things happen.
That man is a man of firm wisdom.
When you hear that,
What do you.
.
.
What comes to you,
Does that feel good,
Does that feel impossible,
Does it Feel optimistic?
Does it feel depressing?
I'm going to read another version while you're thinking.
It's like you read my mind.
I'm going to read Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's version.
He whose mind is unshaken in the midst of sorrows.
Who amongst pleasures is free from longing.
From whom attachment,
Fear,
And anger have departed.
He is said to be a sage of steady intellect.
He who has no undue fondness towards anything,
Who neither exalts nor recoils on gaining what is good or bad,
His intellect is established.
Confirms my position on this fantastic path of my soul.
The Buddhist teaching of letting go,
Of clinging and outcome.
It's been a tough road to get there.
Okay.
Difficult to release desires,
Feeling confused,
How to find direction without external motivation.
Ooh.
That's awesome.
Practicing non-attachment.
First reaction,
Longing for that to be so.
Hope,
Mm-hmm.
It's opposite of my programming.
Becoming non-dualistic.
So the first question I'd like to ask you If you were to say that someone was of steadfast wisdom or firm wisdom.
What would that mean to you?
What would they be like?
Equanimity.
What is wisdom if you are a person of wisdom?
What's the first thing that comes to you when you think of?
Being in a state of firm wisdom.
Unbiased.
Non-reactive.
In some way I was at this point.
My world collapsed.
Me too.
It brings up grief.
Stillness,
Stability,
Comfortable in their own skin.
Calm,
Sure,
Genuine.
Calm and balanced.
Beginner's mind.
One who comes from unconditional love.
Able to see through and beyond constructs and cultural BS.
Totally.
Secure within.
Isn't that an interesting phrase?
To be secure inside of ourselves.
Regardless.
What's going on around us.
Now one of the important things about this is that This teaching is not saying.
That you should act like this.
It's not saying that you should pretend to be of firm wisdom and pretend to have this indifference to good or bad or pleasure or pain.
That's not what it's saying.
It's saying.
That when you come to a place,
Where you no longer are longing.
For good or sad about things that you've lost or whatever.
You will be a person of firm wisdom.
And that's very different.
I remember reading.
Conversations with God.
By Neil Donald Walsh.
And in there he talked about.
The Ten Commandments.
Thou shalt not steal,
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife,
Thou shalt not kill,
Thou shalt not,
You know.
And it sounds like.
.
.
Set of rules.
Don't kill anybody.
Don't do this.
Don't covet your neighbor's donkey.
Don't,
You know.
.
.
But that doesn't work.
If you covet somebody's partner,
You covet them.
That's what you want.
If you're jealous of someone,
You're jealous of them.
If you find yourself killing people,
Probably doesn't matter how many people tell you not to do it,
You're probably still going to do it.
Intellectually,
It doesn't make any difference.
His interpretation of the Ten Commandments were was that.
As you continue on your spiritual journey,
You shall not covet.
The things of other people.
You just won't.
One day you'll come to a place where.
.
.
You won't want to kill anybody or you won't want to steal or you won't want to Do whatever.
You won't want to create graven images of God.
You will just have it all within.
And you won't need what the neighbor has because.
.
.
You have it all within.
And it's more like a tracker to say,
Interesting.
So I still am longing for things I don't have.
And again,
I'm not talking about basic needs.
I'm not talking about I wish I had enough money to pay rent or I wish I had enough money to feed my kids.
That's not what we're talking about.
That's basic survival.
I mean.
I want more.
I want more than that.
And so it's the same with this.
He's basically saying,
Arjuna has asked,
What does this person of wisdom look like?
So if I,
He's basically saying,
If I do everything you said,
If I do all these things,
If I embrace all these ideas,
You're telling me.
What's life going to be like?
So it's interesting to think,
Okay,
So.
.
.
As I cultivate wisdom in my life.
I will slowly not be attached to all of these ups and downs.
And we've all experienced that.
You know,
These are the things that come with life.
You know,
If you've made a lot of money,
Lost a lot of money,
Made a lot of money,
You sort of eventually cultivate the wisdom that says,
Money really does just come and go.
It has nothing to do with me or my happiness.
For me,
I've gained and lost hundreds and hundreds of pounds.
I've been extremely skinny.
I've been overweight.
Weight goes up and down.
It's just the way it is.
But you couldn't have told me that when I was 16 going on a diet.
But here at 57,
I know this.
Health comes and goes.
Today I have a runny nose.
You know.
Two days ago I was fine.
It'll run its course.
It'll do what it has to do.
In time,
We do cultivate wisdom.
We do understand.
Everything comes and goes exactly.
Everything.
It's sort of like the ups and downs of life.
Even the ups and downs in relationship.
When I first got married.
35 years ago sometime long time ago My parents never fought,
Or at least they never fought in front of us.
And as soon as something went amok with my husband and I,
I thought our relationship was over.
I assumed I'd married the wrong person.
Because I hadn't cultivated.
That what I needed.
To actually navigate the difficult times.
I'd never seen that.
I'd never seen it in my parents.
I'd never seen it with anybody.
I didn't know that it was normal to have struggles when you're living with another person.
Fast forward to today.
William and I have been together for four and a half years,
Guys.
And it's so interesting because if something comes up.
.
.
We've both been through enough together that we go.
And it's not that it doesn't hurt.
It's not that it's not a trigger.
It's not that we don't feel horrible in the middle of it.
But we've been through enough to know.
Okay,
We just have to sit with it and we just have to be honest and we might have to cry and we have to be vulnerable.
But we'll solve it.
This is wisdom.
And we all have it.
We all have pieces of our life where we know this and we're no longer attached.
To the ups and downs.
Of everything.
We're not attached to them.
It's like,
Do we still feel them?
100%.
Absolutely,
We feel them.
That's why we're here.
This non-attachment is never meant to be.
Make life cold.
So for example,
If you try to practice.
Firm wisdom of non-attachment and equanimity kind of idea.
If you try to do that,
What happens in life?
Well suddenly.
.
.
You go outside and it's a beautiful day.
One of my favorite things is to walk out and smell the morning.
And I don't care if it's summertime and it's warm and you can smell the gardens,
Or it's wintertime and you can smell the snow.
Either way,
I love that.
But what if I read this teaching and said,
No,
No,
No.
You can't enjoy that.
You can't be attached to smelling the morning,
Katrina.
Of course we can.
I don't have to be attached to it.
Attachment means when I go out and smell the morning,
It better not be raining because I've had it with the rain.
Or it better be warm because I'm sick of this wintertime.
That's different than.
.
.
Ugh,
Isn't this something?
Or Maybe you are totally averse to losing things or I don't know,
Even like leaving a job.
Let's say you've had a job,
But it really is soul sucking,
Like it's really not good for you.
It might be really hard to leave that job.
And you've got to feel it all.
You've got to feel the fear.
You've got to feel the frustration.
You've got to feel the pain.
Everything.
Maybe it's even a difficulty of pride,
Like I remember when I was.
When I realized I was going to divorce my husband.
My pride was one of my number one downfalls.
Because I was known in the town as this spiritual teacher and I did counseling with people and counseling with couples and all this stuff.
And then I actually had a huge hit to my ego that I was going to have to admit publicly that I had divorced.
It's nonsense.
It's absolute nonsense.
That's reality.
That's how I felt.
But the other thing is,
If I don't feel it,
I can't.
Transcend it.
You know,
If I pretend I'm not.
My ego's not taking a hit.
If I pretend that I'm fine with this,
I don't care,
I don't feel sad,
I'm fine.
Then it just gets buried in this little like powder keg that now lives inside of you that's going to explode one day or it's going to come out in tiny little darts at people all the time,
Little disses at people who have marriage problems or happy marriages or whatever.
But if you dive into it at the time,
You start to realize,
Oh.
I guess it's kind of normal.
Probably lots of people feel like this.
And it just becomes part of life.
But the loading isn't there.
So imagine living in a way that We know that,
You know what,
Sometimes things go our way,
Or at least things go the way that we thought they were going to go.
Maybe we had an idea in our mind.
Of how things were going to go,
And they're not going that way.
If we're attached to them going the way we want them to go.
We actually create this tension inside of us.
This stops all creative thought.
All creative solutions.
But instead,
If we're like.
.
.
That's not going the way I thought.
Okay.
I wonder if there's another option.
Do I wish it had gone the way I thought?
100%.
But if I don't have attachment to it,
I can say,
Okay,
Then maybe there's something else.
And I can't tell you how often for me,
Like if I think about business or.
.
.
My yoga teacher trainings or different things I do.
That I'm so sure it's gonna work one way and it doesn't.
And I have to sit back and get creative.
And It turns out even better than I thought.
And that's the bliss,
That as soon as we aren't attached to it,
As soon as we aren't loaded,
We still have the capacity to be creative and think of new ideas.
So it's actually very blissful.
So the crazy thing is,
Over time we start to realize that,
Wow,
When I go up,
I have all these experiences.
When I go down,
Wow,
I learn a lot there too.
So you almost start to look forward to all of it.
Obviously,
We kind of mostly look forward to happy times.
But if we go into a dark time,
It's like,
Huh.
I guess I'm being held still for a little while.
You know,
That's interesting.
I want to read something that Paramahansa Yogananda said.
Fear is caused by a sense of impending misfortune.
So imagine we come to the place in life that we realize that sometimes things work out the way we wanted,
And sometimes things work out in ways we didn't expect.
And we just know that.
That's life.
We've done it so many times over the decades,
It'd be silly to think that It's always going to go the way that my brain imagined it.
So then all of a sudden,
What if we weren't worried?
About impending misfortune.
Right?
We weren't worried about it.
And then we didn't have fear.
How much of our fear is about some imagined future.
Some imagined misfortune.
But as soon as we can truly embrace.
That life goes in places we never know.
And we never know why until it's over.
Steve Jobs famously said that you can only connect the dots in hindsight.
So imagine going to the beginning of that and just saying,
Well,
Then there's nothing really to be afraid of,
Is there?
I'm not going to sit around worrying about that because.
.
.
Whatever comes will be interesting one way or the other.
Imagine how different that would be.
Living like that.
Imagine how joyful that would be.
To not be plagued by fear,
Like right now.
Imagine all your fears just dissipated.
All of them.
What would life feel like?
There's another piece I want to read to you.
The neutrality of the wise man.
Is not heartless indifference.
But the conscious control.
And calming of the faculties of consciousness.
In the man who is a puppet of nature.
The mind components of feeling,
Ego,
Senses,
And discrimination.
Citta ahamkara manasambuddhi.
Are an excitable mix of delusion.
Influenced actions and reactions.
The components of our mind.
Are an excitable mix of delusion-influenced actions and reactions.
And that's interesting,
Right?
It's interesting,
Like in yoga,
They talk about the aspects of the mind.
They talk about manas,
Which is the senses,
That what I see is the part of my mind that interprets what I see,
Feel,
Touch,
Hear,
Taste.
The chitta,
Chitta is all of the memories that I have.
So maybe I see something,
Manas interprets it,
And then it references chitta and says,
Oh,
We did that before.
And then booty over here is the intellect.
And the intellect says,
I don't like that.
I don't like that.
What if it happens again?
I don't like that.
And then they start to bang around each other.
They just start passing thoughts back and forth.
And all of these combine to create ahamkara,
Which is the ego.
Imagine just experiencing life.
As it comes.
Just every day.
Imagine having the humility.
That today.
We have no idea what's gonna happen.
No idea.
Even we may have.
All kinds of plans or hopes or dreams,
But the truth is today is a mystery.
Can I say that phrase again?
Oh,
The components of the mind.
So manas,
Like M-A-N-A-S,
Is the part of the mind that interprets the world based on our sensory input.
So that's what says,
Oh,
I smell barbecue.
And chitta over here is our memory bank that says,
Oh,
I know that smells like barbecue.
And buddhi over here is the intellect that says,
I love barbecue.
Or maybe you're vegan and you're like,
I hate barbecue.
You know what I mean?
And then the thoughts go like this.
And then ahamkara,
All of these things make up the ego.
And the ego is like.
.
.
This is who I am.
This is what I like.
This is what I don't like.
This is what I believe in.
This is,
You know,
And it's not a bad thing.
Ego is not a bad thing.
But all these thoughts are exhausting.
And what do they do?
They keep us out of.
.
.
The current.
A person of wisdom is always right here,
Right now.
I had cancer a few years ago and this has been a practice for me,
Learning to let go of the fear of what if it comes back.
It was what's interesting about that.
Yes,
I remember.
When I was researching my book,
What If You Could Skip the Cancer?
It was really interesting because.
.
.
A lot of people who made big changes,
Like me,
When you're sick and you sort of kind of look at life and you say,
You know what,
I'm going to be honest from now on and I'm not going to be something I'm not and I'm going to say yes when I mean yes and I'm going to say no when I mean no.
I remember one woman,
She said,
I'm thankful the cancer is gone.
But some part of me wishes just a little bit of it was sitting on my shoulder all the time.
Because as long as I had cancer,
I was allowed to say my truth around people.
I was allowed to say no,
I don't feel like doing that,
I'm tired.
And her training,
Unfortunately,
Was that.
If she was well.
She had to say yes.
My mom was exactly the same at the end of her life.
She was so,
So incredibly sick.
She would be at all kinds of drugs and surgeries and all kinds of stuff.
And it was almost like if someone said,
Could we come over and visit?
It's like she heard that can.
And she thought,
Well,
I can talk to them.
She didn't want to.
She wanted to sleep.
And I remember when she was very,
Very sick at the end,
That she was finally able to say,
I don't feel like company today.
But the second she had a breath in her,
She had all kinds of obligatory visitation.
And so.
.
.
Just interesting to watch.
It's almost like we want to carry the wisdom and the lesson so that it doesn't have to return back.
I also like this one.
You ready?
The Muni or Man of Wisdom.
Has withdrawn his consciousness.
From the distorted testimony of the sense mind.
And has focused on the soul.
The Man of Wisdom.
Has withdrawn his consciousness.
From the distorted testimony of the sense mind and has focused on the soul.
Isn't that cool?
Like it's not like you're just withdrawing from the world into nothingness.
You're connecting to your soul's path.
I often think about that,
You know.
Imagine we were taught at a young age that We came here for experiences.
And sometimes they're happy and sometimes they're sad.
And if something doesn't go our way,
It doesn't mean we did anything wrong.
Doesn't mean we failed.
Just means that that's the way it went this time.
And that that was normal.
That that was a normal.
Part of life.
Can you imagine?
Imagine how different life would be?
Again,
It centers you in this wonderful place of choice.
Because suddenly all day long,
You're not.
Sidetracked by the fear of what may or may not happen,
You're just right here making choices all the time.
What ifs are so weird?
What if the cancer comes back?
What if this happens?
What if they lose their job?
It's a strange habit that we were taught.
Mind you,
Joe Dispenza says that.
I'm sure other people say it too,
But I heard him say once that it's our primal survival wiring to kind of think of the worst case scenario all the time so we're prepared for it.
But living that animalistic,
Fearful life is really hard to thrive in.
So that's where we sort of have to bring in our frontal cortex that's not primal and actually say,
What do I see?
What is my philosophy of life?
And the what ifs are really dangerous.
It doesn't matter who we are or what we're doing.
I'm gonna re-read it here.
Okay,
Guys,
Ready?
He whose mind is untroubled by any misfortune.
Whose craving for pleasures has disappeared.
Who is free from greed,
Fear,
Anger.
Who is unattached to all things.
Who neither grieves nor rejoices if good or bad things happen.
That man is a man of firm wisdom.
It's so interesting because the bottom line is.
.
.
Have to do the spiritual practices,
Whatever they are.
Maybe it's meditation,
Maybe it's journaling,
Maybe it's yoga,
Maybe it's tantric meditation,
Like who knows what your spiritual path is.
But whatever it is,
It should change you.
Because when it changes you,
We slowly find ourselves more and more.
Like that.
We don't push it,
We don't force it.
We just.
.
.
Find ourself less troubled by misfortune.
We find ourselves able to resist cravings or desires that we don't need to follow.
We aren't as attached to things.
We don't get all freaked out if good or bad things happen.
We still experience them.
But it doesn't throw us off the planet.
Soul,
Soul purpose,
Spiritual practice seems attachment too.
I guess for me,
I feel like there's a difference between attachment,
And connection.
You can be connected to people.
But not be attached to them.
My kids live in this town.
My son is 31.
He and his wife have a new baby,
So I have a grandchild.
My daughter is 29,
She lives here too.
And I am so incredibly thankful that they live here,
That I get to hang out with them and I get to see them regularly.
If one day one of them said,
I'm moving to Portugal.
Would I be sad?
Of course I would be.
And I would be happy for them.
Attachment says,
You can't leave.
You can't leave me!
How am I ever gonna?
I'm never gonna see my grandson again.
You can't leave.
That's attachment.
Without attachment,
I actually get to feel even more.
I get to love them even more.
In fact,
I'm a lot like that because I know that at some point they may move away.
I'm very blessed that they are here in this very small town in the middle of Ontario.
And so I actually kind of gush even more.
Because I know that I can't hold on to them.
So it's an interesting thing when we drop the attachment and we drop all that.
We actually feel more.
When we chase pleasure.
We barely even experience it because we're so stressed out trying to get the pleasure,
Whether it's the extra money or the extra promotion or losing all the weight or whatever.
It's like a must or a sex or whatever.
It's like,
I just must have this pleasure.
And similarly,
We fear loss like crazy.
Well,
What if our attachments?
To our fear of loss means that we never get into a new relationship.
What if our fear of loss never lets us?
On a pet.
Or try something new.
As soon as we no longer fear loss.
Or are so attached to the gains.
We can pursue all of it in so much joy.
There's one last quote I want to share with you at the end.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi,
In his interpretation he says,
This man has no undue fondness.
Undue fondness.
He says he's not coldness.
He says he's not too emotionally attached.
In fact,
People like this have a full heart.
An unbounded ocean of love and happiness.
Because you're right here all the time experiencing all the things.
Well,
Thank you guys so much for being here.
Thanks for exploring this with me.
Well,
I hope you have a wonderful week.
I'll see you later.
